The True Front | 41Berlin as a representative from Bavaria, and would like to see you working in the
same capacity in Vienna.”^143 He reiterated the invitation a week later:
The situation in Munich is very serious: it will almost be a miracle if the revo-
lution can survive the economic problems left by the war. The worst danger is
that the Entente demands a central government, elected by the people through
a national assembly, in order to engage in peace negotiations. Otherwise, the
autonomous republics would manage despite all difficulties...
In any case—and this I can promise—Bavaria will not abdicate its autono-
my. You should write down your thoughts on people’s education, on publish-
ing, etc., and send them to me; or even better: you should come with them to
Munich soon!... The collaboration with Eisner functions very well. I am sure
you have seen from his proclamations how “anarchist” his understanding of
democracy is: he favors the active participation of the people in all social bod-
ies, not bleak parliamentarism.^144Clearly, Landauer thought at the time that Buber might heed his call to take part
in the revolution in Munich, and it appears that Buber did indeed visit in Decem-
ber when he delivered The Holy Way.^145
The Holy Way lecture Buber delivered in Munich is by far his most Landau-
erian work to that point. Summarizing the words of La Boétie, Landauer had
said: “It is in you! It is not on the outside. It is you. Humans shall not be united by
domination, but as brothers without domination: an-archy.”^146 In The Holy Way,
Buber encapsulates the principles of the “Jewish will to realization” as follows:
“All these principles can be summed up in the watchword: from within! Nothing
new can be established by stripping an autocratic constitution off a country and
superimposing on it a communist one instead when life between man and man
remains unchanged, and so too the methods of government.”^147 Landauer had
said that after the first wave of cooperative settlements, the revolution would con-
front the state-imposed obstacle of the lack of land and would then “enter a new
phase that we can say nothing about. The same goes for social regeneration; we
can proclaim it, but we can say nothing about how it will develop. It will depend
on the following generations and their judgment.”^148 Buber concludes The Holy
Way with a similar warning:
It is not my task today to speak of the establishment of a true community in
Zion beyond the general.... Nor is it up to us to impose structural schemes
upon future developments.... [W]e do not know how far we shall succeed in
keeping [the masses] out of the land where they will probably smell an op-
portunity for exploitation and profit. But far more profoundly, beyond all past
and future disappointment, we are certain of Israel, and expectantly ready
for God.^149Buber has transposed Landauer’s ideals and values from Germany to Zion. He
strengthens that shift by politicizing the binary distinction of the productive elite